If you’ve embraced the old maxim, “Ignorance is bliss.” then you’re possibly wrong.  You see not so long ago my wife and I were a bit distressed because we had debt of an unknown amount and bills coming in of unknown amounts kicking my sorry bum at unknown times.  Basically our ignorance of our financial state kept us spending with credit cards, panicking over those bills, and wondering where all our money was going.  We were ignorant and in despair.

However, after going over a very, very thorough plan of our budget we discovered that we had a lot more money left over if we were disciplined and that we could tackle the debt issue.  What you have to do is find out where you’re at so that you don’t step onto any land mines.  Just like the Windows game “Mine Sweeper” we were clicking in the dark with fear that we might be clicking on an explosive month with more month than money.  Now we’ve got a goal, peace and a plan.

If you’re frustrated with bills, now is the time to get ahead.  I’d strongly recommend reading “Your Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey if you want a good plan and some motivation.

I just heard a gal who had called in on the Dave Ramsey Show talking about the concept of borrowing money from a home loan/home equity loan as being a bad idea.  She had been chastised by her family member for being so brash as to not maximize her dollars to make money on the stock market.  She told Dave, “If it was that easy, I figure everybody would be doing it.”  This common sense thinking is so rare in the financial world.  Dave’s mathematical discussion of the issue also was an interesting discussion.

If you take out a loan at six percent, make twelve percent on the stock market do you ‘make’ six percent on your investment?  The answer is no for several reasons.  The first reason is that you’ll pay some sort of brokerage fee somewhere, or a trading fee of some sort.  Then you pay taxes on that money, the percentage may vary depending on what you have going on in your life, but then another chunk just simply vanishes with inflation.  The money that you make could be no money at all or you could lose money.  Yes, some people may make money, but will it be enough?  Not really.  Figure that if you paid off your home mortgage and all debts and then invested heavily in some sort of safe investment with continual amounts of money, with less risk than debt, then you’d come out ahead with greater certainty.  If you get into debt, pour your resources into investing but get injured, get fired or get demoted your house payments are wrapped up in an investment that you’ll be penalized for taking out and living off of.

In short: get rid of debt.

The debt bubble, as it has been called by various pundits, is really not just a bubble.  Nope, its like a debt foam.  Millions and millions of tiny little personal bubbles creating one large sea of debt foam that houses, cars, televisions, couches and food rest on across the nations of the world.  You can help slowly deflate the debt foam to the point of its non-existence, one person at a time.  Manage your own debt, get financially stable and while you’re at it, tell a friend.  Tell them about this site, tell them about another site, but tell someone.  Tell someone about how you’re deflating your personal bubble, tell them how you have learned about debt, what you’re doing to kill debt in your own life, and then tell them to tell someone else.

This isn’t about voting with your feet, this is about living the real American dream of financial stability.  Living within your means is so much more fulfilling than blasting away monsters on an x-box 360 Discover/Novus owns while sitting on a couch you’re not going to make payments on until next year in a house that you will actually own in 2040.  Take charge, help your neighbors take charge so that we stop charging our lives on plastic, but instead own our futures!